Lucky Wander Boy

[Dave_K.]

Announced on slashdot today, a book that probably everyone on BYOAC would enjoy (at least for those of us over 25yrs old).

http://books.slashdot.org/books/03/03/11/152225.shtml?tid=127&tid=192

To Buy/Read Extract of the book go here http://www.luckywanderboy.com/

Here is the slashdot overview:

It's the mid-90s and Adam Pennyman's got no particular place to go, so he finds himself in a Los Angeles apartment with a cranky soon-to-be-ex girlfriend and a copy of MAME, everyone's favorite game emulator. His collection grows until he feels compelled to document it, or his life as realized through his gaming, in an unpublishable text called the Catalogue of Obscure Entertainments.

Unimpressed, his girlfriend starts edging out of his life just as a chance meeting with a former friend lands Adam a copywriting gig at Portal Entertainment, a dot-com ostensibly in the process of turning various videogame properties into movies. (The real business, of course, involves turning smoke and mirrors into venture cap; alumni of, oh, D*N or El*ctr*m*dia are encouraged to up the dosage of whatever they're taking to quell the flashbacks during the passages describing Portal's office culture.)

But Portal puts Adam within reach of the gamer's Grail: Lucky Wander Boy, a rare and bizarre game created by the reclusive Araki Itachi. Lucky Wander Boy was years ahead of its time, and so intricately coded that no one, no one, ever reached third level. Or have they? Adam nearly did once, long ago, and has been haunted ever since by a memory of gameplay that just couldn't have truly happened... could it? Adam will go far to find out. Very far indeed.

I love me some metaphysical conceits in my fiction, so strictly for the description of the Lucky Wander Boy game I'd rate this book highly. (It doesn't exist. It couldn't exist. I want it to exist. Dammit.) The author's done a fine job capturing a certain kind of thinking that occurs when smart people start reading deeper meaning into their obsessions.

Adam's ruminations on many of the classics (Pac-Man, Microsurgeon, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., et al.) ring player-true -- which is why it's so glorious and scary when he goes off the rails with you right beside him. If you played in the days when primitive graphics and freshly-minuted archetypes made gameplay somehow even more addictive, this book will cause howls of recognition. Best of all, it's well-written and for the most part affectionate to the subculture; be glad this quasi-historical novel was written by the promising Weiss and not by that maiden aunt of yours who wouldn't let you have any more quarters.

[Distortion]

Wow, that sounds pretty interesting, I'll have to keep my eye out for it.  I'm 18, it's not my era, but I still am quite interested.

[romperwomb]

Thought I'd raise this thread from the dead for Halloween!  I just picked this book up on the cheap at an outlet bookstore and am now about 60 pages into it.  It's been an interesting read so far.  It has to be the only fiction book out there where MAME and the characters lust for retrogaming is an integral part of the story.

I dig when the main character waxes esoteric...him thinking about how some day HE will be emulated in some future computer.

Anyone else read this?